Two weeks of DPC Struggle

Hey guys,

after spending about two weeks on reinstalling and reconfiguring my OS and Bios i guess these boards will be the last stop before i give up on the matter entirely.

I'm struggling with the stuttering issue for a long time now, most of the time it is small enough to ignore as I don't hear cracks in sound or anything alike. It becomes apparent only when I play games but even then it didn't bother me too much since i don't take gaming that seriously.

This month though I had some free time and decided to try and eliminate the issue for good. Put my CPU and Ram to stock settings, disabled everything in bios that i could and started testing. Two weeks later I am still at a loss. (and kinda frustrated to be honest )

Let's get down to it:

A. Basic info

Read More:

Self-built

Desktop

Exact model number: -

Windows 10

x64

Up to date on updates.

What was original installed OS on system: This one.

Is the OS an OEM version (came pre-installed on system) or full retail version (YOU purchased it from retailer)?: Retail

CONCLUSION
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Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks. You are likely to experience buffer underruns appearing as drop outs, clicks or pops. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates.
LatencyMon has been analyzing your system for 0:01:41 (h:mm:ss) on all processors.

Note: reported execution times may be calculated based on a fixed reported CPU speed. Disable variable speed settings like Intel Speed Step and AMD Cool N Quiet in the BIOS setup for more accurate results.

WARNING: the CPU speed that was measured is only a fraction of the CPU speed reported. Your CPUs may be throttled back due to variable speed settings and thermal issues. It is suggested that you run a utility which reports your actual CPU frequency and temperature.

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MEASURED INTERRUPT TO USER PROCESS LATENCIES
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The interrupt to process latency reflects the measured interval that a usermode process needed to respond to a hardware request from the moment the interrupt service routine started execution. This includes the scheduling and execution of a DPC routine, the signaling of an event and the waking up of a usermode thread from an idle wait state in response to that event.

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REPORTED ISRs
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Interrupt service routines are routines installed by the OS and device drivers that execute in response to a hardware interrupt signal.

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REPORTED DPCs
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DPC routines are part of the interrupt servicing dispatch mechanism and disable the possibility for a process to utilize the CPU while it is interrupted until the DPC has finished execution.

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REPORTED HARD PAGEFAULTS
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Hard pagefaults are events that get triggered by making use of virtual memory that is not resident in RAM but backed by a memory mapped file on disk. The process of resolving the hard pagefault requires reading in the memory from disk while the process is interrupted and blocked from execution.

NOTE: some processes were hit by hard pagefaults. If these were programs producing audio, they are likely to interrupt the audio stream resulting in dropouts, clicks and pops. Check the Processes tab to see which programs were hit.

Re: Two weeks of DPC Struggle

A quick update - I seem to have narrowed down the culprit to network interface.

Using Lanbench (LANBench - A Simple LAN / TCP Network Benchmark Utility) always skyrockets the DPC Latency up to 60 thousands microseconds. I have two nics on my motherboard - Intel i218-v and killer nic e2200, but the issue is occuring with both so I'm not really sure how to proceed in trying to resolve this issue.

My only guess would be downgrading to windows 7 again but it doesn't have usb 3.0 or nvme basic support for the installer, so setting it up wont be easy.

If you have any suggestions please share

Regards

p.s. also the killer nic drivers (just the drivers, no software) somehow manage to inconsistently break my webcam so it gets a yellow triangle in device manager (what the hell?). I can't even imagine how those two things can be connected to each other. Sometimes plugging the webcam in and out again fixes the issue, sometimes it doesn't.

Re: Two weeks of DPC Struggle

Another update, after some struggle I managed to install win7 on my ssd with usb3 and test it there.

Although initially the nic behaved the same way as it did on 10, i managed to find the right settings for the killer nic through TCPOptimizer and Device manager interface where it doesn't spike anymore while lan bench.

Turns out it's not the sole factor that was responsible for the spikes. Despite being much lower and less frequent they are still present when trying to play an online game. Running benchmarks on cpu/gpu/memory/ssd/network separately does not reproduce the spikes.

As of now I'm downloading the performance toolkit alternative for windows 7 to hopefully find out where the problem is.

Re: Two weeks of DPC Struggle

After another day of struggle, gpu - testing, ram - testing and tweaking I am still at a loss.

So much time and effort spent in vain is kind of frustrating so I'll probably have to revert back to win7 at least for the moment. (especially after reading this article - Finally Windows 10 could support audio! )

I'll be able to test my old pci NIC on win7 and see if it makes a difference.

Re: Two weeks of DPC Struggle

Hello,
I hope this will help to narrow the issue at least.
have you tried to completely disable one of the NIC cards simply for test?
I believe this is EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 if so can you please download and install the last driver
What is the sound card as in Speccy there is not much about it?
This model of GPU been compromised in the past and they have released a new firmware with a fix.
I know it is really weird to talk about VGA firmware but this card use to have lot of issues with that in Speccy I can see the firmware have been recognized as BIOS Version: 86.06.0e.00.71 this is pretty outdated.
As far as I know this can be updated by installing the last drivers, there was a way to do it manually before but now the vendor have removed all of the links so I`m guessing driver update will be sufficient enough.
I hope that will help at least a bit with your issue.
Good Luck,
Andy

Re: Two weeks of DPC Struggle

Originally Posted by RepairandRestore

Hello,
I hope this will help to narrow the issue at least.
have you tried to completely disable one of the NIC cards simply for test?
I believe this is EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 if so can you please download and install the last driver
What is the sound card as in Speccy there is not much about it?
This model of GPU been compromised in the past and they have released a new firmware with a fix.
I know it is really weird to talk about VGA firmware but this card use to have lot of issues with that in Speccy I can see the firmware have been recognized as BIOS Version: 86.06.0e.00.71 this is pretty outdated.
As far as I know this can be updated by installing the last drivers, there was a way to do it manually before but now the vendor have removed all of the links so I`m guessing driver update will be sufficient enough.
I hope that will help at least a bit with your issue.
Good Luck,
Andy

First of all, thanks for the suggestions

yes I've been able to rule out the nic by turning all nics off in bios ( my mobo has two) and still being able to reproduce the spikes.

The GPU Model is Gainward GTX 1060 (Products :: Gainward GeForce(R) GTX 1060 6GB), sadly updating drivers does not update bios of the gpu. Updating bios is not a very safe thing to do and Nvidia does not want to bear responsibility for such a thing.

While we are on this topic - I've previously found two versions of bios for my gpu while trying to overclock it about one year ago. I've tried both of them and they seem to both equally bad.

Right now I've sent my gpu in for rma because I'm out of things to test short of trying another mobo/cpu. But I'm not sure they will be willing to replace the card because it performs well withing specifications and objectively there is nothing wrong with it.

If you don't want to read all of it - I used experttool from gainward to change the settings and msi kombustor to test the clock. One and a half years ago when i first overclocked it, it could go +450MHz on core, now however it barely manages +220MHz for reasons unclear to me.

Re: Two weeks of DPC Struggle

I have read the post about overclocking you have few misses but I don`t think you go far enough to basically damage the GPU.
Do you remember what was the average temperature when you was overclocking to 220Mhz ?
Just suggestion again it is difficult to be certain on this.
I think either the driver support of the card cutting large resource or the GPU it self operate literally on 50% In the other forum you said 70c which is really good for a GPU so I`m more narrow to the bad drivers and firmware for this model as it is kind of old.
I honestly disbelieve the vendor will replace the card even if you show a prove the card works on 50% only.
I don`t think I can help as much as I like to.
I hope someone of the more experience people will post with opinion on this issue as this is indeed award issue.

Re: Two weeks of DPC Struggle

Originally Posted by RepairandRestore

I have read the post about overclocking you have few misses but I don`t think you go far enough to basically damage the GPU.
Do you remember what was the average temperature when you was overclocking to 220Mhz ?
Just suggestion again it is difficult to be certain on this.
I think either the driver support of the card cutting large resource or the GPU it self operate literally on 50% In the other forum you said 70c which is really good for a GPU so I`m more narrow to the bad drivers and firmware for this model as it is kind of old.
I honestly disbelieve the vendor will replace the card even if you show a prove the card works on 50% only.
I don`t think I can help as much as I like to.
I hope someone of the more experience people will post with opinion on this issue as this is indeed award issue.

I appreciate your help either way.

The temps on the gpu have been about 75C at most and i only overclocked it for testing purposes and didnt leave it on for any games.

I'm not sure what do you mean when you say it's old because it's still the latest generation of gpus from nvidia.

I'll update the thread once I get my gpu or the replacement model back.

Re: Two weeks of DPC Struggle

Just for the sake of the test, can you please turn off all of the internal devices on your motherboard?
I would amend to reset the Bios to defaults and after that simply disable all of the integrated components on the mother board as LAN, Sound card and internal VGA if exist.
What USB devices you have connected ?
If you have the chance simply plug in simple USB keyboard and mouse literally to try avoiding any issues from interface as wireless or Bluetooth keyboard, mouse, headset and so on.
If you have a sound system connected please remove the jack from the computer.
If you have any front panel connectors as USBs, sound jack and so on please remove them as well.
It is a great deal if you have the chance to take the mobo out of the chase and basically place on a cartoon box or something.
You will need only Mobo (with disabled integrated modules ), VGA and HDD with the simplest keyboard and mouse you could find.
This way you can check the GPU excluding multimedia as sound and etc.
Even your PSU looks completely healthy can cause such issues as well so trying with another PSU it is a great idea.
Good Luck :)

Re: Two weeks of DPC Struggle

Originally Posted by RepairandRestore

Just for the sake of the test, can you please turn off all of the internal devices on your motherboard?
I would amend to reset the Bios to defaults and after that simply disable all of the integrated components on the mother board as LAN, Sound card and internal VGA if exist.
What USB devices you have connected ?
If you have the chance simply plug in simple USB keyboard and mouse literally to try avoiding any issues from interface as wireless or Bluetooth keyboard, mouse, headset and so on.
If you have a sound system connected please remove the jack from the computer.
If you have any front panel connectors as USBs, sound jack and so on please remove them as well.
It is a great deal if you have the chance to take the mobo out of the chase and basically place on a cartoon box or something.
You will need only Mobo (with disabled integrated modules ), VGA and HDD with the simplest keyboard and mouse you could find.
This way you can check the GPU excluding multimedia as sound and etc.
Even your PSU looks completely healthy can cause such issues as well so trying with another PSU it is a great idea.
Good Luck :)

Thank you for the suggestion,

the steps you described have been the very first I've tried. There is nothing left i can disable. The system does not have a connected sound or any other disconnectable device left that I am aware of. Everything is disabled in bios/device manager. Only keyboard and mouse are connected in compatibility mode @125hz polling rate.

I already did take out the mobo and its standing on my desk, Not only did I try resetting bios, I also tried reverting it back to an older version which sadly didn't help.

I'll try testing the gpu and psu later today or tomorrow. If that's not it then I don't know what else i can do short of buying a new pc.

Re: Two weeks of DPC Struggle

The only 2 components remaining are Mobo and CPU which i can't test separately because I don't have another CPU that fits the socket. (I've also tried reseating the CPU with no success)

I might talk this over with the reseller and if he points me to manufacturer either sell the system or send it in for repairs (which usually take about 6 weeks and sometimes come back with the same issues).